Canadian Cities

Structures of Indifference examines an Indigenous life and death in a Canadian city and what it reveals about the ongoing history of colonialism. At the heart of this story is a 34-hour period in September 2008. During that day and half, Brian Sinclair, a middle-aged, non-Status Anishinaabeg resident of Manitoba's capital city, arrived in the emergency room of the Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg's major downtown hospital, was left untreated and unattended to, and ultimately died from an easily treatable infection.

Élie Mestenapeo sort de prison après avoir purgé sa peine pour le meurtre de son père, un homme alcoolique et violent. Sa communauté innue de Nutashkuan l'a banni. Il débarque à Montréal et se retrouve très vite dans la rue. Il y croisera des personnes d'autres nations, Inuit, Cris, Atikamekw, venues comme lui s'échouer dans la métropole, et il fera des rencontres déterminantes, qui l'aideront à se reconstruire.

Alors que se prépare l’Expo, ça grouille de vie à la Place des Érables. Le beau pharmacien manifeste de plus en plus d’intérêt pour Mado, l’exubérante serveuse du casse-croûte. Cependant, il n’aura pas les coudées aussi franches qu’il le souhaiterait pour la conquérir. En face, chez les Picard, Arthur est très amoureux de la belle Anna et, à seize ans, semble voir une éclaircie à son avenir. Son ami Daniel et sa chérie n’ont pas la même chance.

Alors que les années 1960 tirent à leur fin, bonheurs et chagrins continuent de se multiplier à la Place des Érables. Agathe, la coiffeuse du quartier, tente de surmonter les pénibles conséquences des frasques de son Rémi et de limiter les commérages à son sujet. Autant essayer de calmer les poules dans une basse-cour!

A body is found on the side of a highway. Naked, throat slashed, no identification. It disappears from the back of a police van and begins a strange odyssey, making its way, over the course of one early winter night, all around the northern town of Sudbury and through the lives and dreams of eleven very different people.

From Vancouver-based writer Chelene Knight, Dear Current Occupant is a creative non-fiction memoir about home and belonging set in the 80s and 90s of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Using a variety of forms, Knight reflects on her childhood through a series of letters addressed to all of the current occupants now living in the twenty different houses she moved in and out of with her mother and brother.

As a local biker war rages - seven shrink-wrapped corpses have been found buried on a farm just outside of Dundurn - an ambitious waterfront project meant to revive the dying industrial city is underway. Dredging is nearly complete when six more bodies turn up at the bottom of the lake. With the body count rising, the situation in Dundurn escalates as a serial killer begins targeting the city's successful young women of colour.

Michael thought he'd found the perfect woman. A companion whose own powers neutralize his werewolf curse, and bring the balance he has always wanted. But his plans on settling down, and giving up the vigilante lifestyle are fleeting. The neo-Nazi Proud Fighters for America have seeped their way across the continent, and have nefarious plans for the city that never sleeps. With Michael's powers nullified in Lex's presence, the couple is forced to divide - and Michael turns to his ex-girlfriend's knowledge of the occult, and an ally he thought was his enemy, to fight this rising evil.

Michael Andrews and Gail Sommers have finally found the love that had eluded them for so long. But their romance has uncovered an ancient evil curse neither of them could have anticipated. It does more than bring down a plague on their houses - it unleashes something far more sinister that can destroy humanity. Now they must choose: battle the evil forces out to destroy them, or continue to meet in secret while the rest of the world burns.

Join a ragtag group of misfits from Dawson City as they scrap to become the 1905 Stanley Cup champions and cement hockey as Canada's national pastime.

Frankie Hanesaka isn't afraid of a little hard work. An industrious boy, if haunted by the mysterious figures of his mother's past in Japan, he grows up in a floating house in the harbour of Port Alberni, BC. With all the Japanese bachelors passing through town to work in the logging camps and lumber mills, maybe he could build a hotel on the water, too. Make a few dollars. But then the war comes.

March 6, 1934. Hundreds gather outside City Hall to celebrate the Toronto Centenary. In the crowd, pickpocket Mona Kantor and her partner, Chesler, are "in the tip", finding easy pickings among the jostling masses. Eli Morenz, city man for the Daily Star, is covering the festivities and uncovering the pickpocket racket working the scene. A surreptitious photo and some keen research lead him to an underworld dive in Kensington Market where Toronto’s pickpockets converge - and to Mona.

It's 2006 and down-and-out protagonist Ghislain works as a reader for a publishing house in Montreal. He's bored with all the wannabe writers who are determined to leave a trace of their passage on earth with their feeble attempts at literary arts. Obsessed by literature and its future (or lack thereof), he reads everything he can in order to translate reality into the literary delirium that is Readopolis--a world imagined out of Chicago and Montreal, with few inhabitants, a convenience store, a parrot, and all kinds of dialogues running amok: cinematic, epistolary, theatrical, and Socratic.

Audio Journeys are exploring Quebec City, Quebec in early February during their Annual Winter Carnival, the largest winter carnival in the world.